HOBSON'S CHOICE. To 30 July.

Southwold/Aldeburgh

HOBSON'S CHOICE
by Harold Brighouse

St Edmund's Hall Southwold then Jubilee Hall Aldeburgh To 30 July 2005
Runs 2hr 20min One interval + one pause
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 July

Hobson's Choice with a choice Hobson.
Good-humour characterises Harold Brighouse's Broadway and London premiered Lancashire comedy; there's not a villain among the characters. Richard Frost's production displays the play's benevolence, without suppressing a sadness under the laughter.

This comes from the process of change underlying human life. Here, in a play written amid the disruptions of World War I, looking back to apparently more stable life a generation back, is not just Brighouse's regular theme of strong-minded women developing men's strengths but the whole sense of change waiting for those in front to take their eye off the ball.

Frost's production achieves a warm humanity, present in Rebecca Steele's Maggie, whose opening sternness to a sister's lover, and towards her pub-going father, melts physically and vocally when she sets about taking nervous young shoemaker William Mossop in hand. She is someone visibly hurt by her father's dismissal of her as beyond marriage, giving an added determination to her wooing of Willy. In later scenes, there's a genuine fondness showing through for her husband.

Richard Emerson's Mossop begins as a hunched, fearful workman. Without spine or will, he's glad to scurry off back below stairs. As events proceed his piping voice deepens, returning to its original boyish pitch only for his last-act curtain line there's still a wondering youth inside the new-made man.

The third act, set on Maggie and Will's wedding-day, achieves a rare sense of male comradeship when the Hobson sisters' men are left alone. But the outstanding performance is Richard Syms' Hobson, someone who, you realise, is a single parent who's tried his best yet cannot understand young women.

There's genuine exasperation as he berates his daughters in the first act, and a finely comic triumph amid his legal troubles when he leaves the wedding-party relieved the burden of managing women is passing to the next generation. The interpretation gives logic to a detail like his agreeing to wear a collar to meet the now-successful Will, as well as his risible offer to the younger man.

Once again designer Maurice Rubens achieves wonders, solving staging demands while providing space for a large cast.

Alice Hobson: Louise Milford
Maggie Hobson: Rebecca Steele
Vickey Hobson: Amy Price
Albert Prosser: Richard Teverson
Henry Horatio Hobson: Richard Syms
Mrs Hepworth: Moyna Cope
Tubby Wadlow: Anthony Falkingham
William Mossop: Richard Emerson
Jim Heeler: Jeffrey Perry
Ada Figgins: Laura Hatyes
Fred Neenstock: Jody Tranter
Dr MacxFarlane: Michael Shaw

Director: Richard Frost
Designer: Maurice Rubens
Lighting: Jim Laws
Costume: Richard Handscombe

2005-08-01 11:22:19